


ivy

by all2well



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Companion Piece, F/F, First Dates, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Modern Era, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:29:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all2well/pseuds/all2well
Summary: Marlene McKinnon is used to being too much for anyone. Enter her celebrity crush, the charming television host of "On Air with Dorcas Meadowes."
Relationships: Marlene McKinnon & Dorcas Meadowes, Marlene McKinnon/Dorcas Meadowes
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	ivy

**Author's Note:**

> a little one-shot about marlene/dorcas. this is set in the world of "the last great american dynasty," between chapters six and seven.

Marlene McKinnon was not shy by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, least of all her own. She was proud of running her mouth and raising her voice when she felt that she was not being heard. As the eldest of five children, former captain of championship-winning women’s soccer teams in both high school and college, and now as a graduate student in a department full of men who insisted on explaining the most basic sociological texts to her, she had had a lot of life experience in being an outspoken advocate. She liked to think of herself as a leader, and a passionate defender against injustice, and a tell-no-lies friend who would be remiss to enable her friends instead of calling them out on their bullshit when she needed to. Normally, she embraced this part of herself that others might have called prickly. Usually, she had no qualms about it.

Except when it came to her love life.

Marlene thought that she was smart, athletic, and good-looking, in a blonde and sporty sort of way. Sure, she had her flaws and blemishes, but didn’t everyone? For the life of her, despite all of the analysis she was able to devote to the subject, she could not understand why her love life was so deeply unexciting, and why it was so devoid of interest even after college, when everyone had promised her that life would be better and relationships more forthcoming. Sure, she had been able to meet and even sleep around with a few people, but those quasi-relationships usually fizzled out with a whimper.

Mary Macdonald, her roommate and one of the few people that Marlene could admit her relationship problems to, often told her that the reason Marlene found it so hard to find a relationship – she had not dated anyone seriously since her freshman year of college – was because of her boisterous, exuberant personality.

“You have to tone it down,” Mary had told her at the end of last year, after Marlene had complained about a woman who once again had failed to reciprocate Marlene’s attentions by alternately claiming that they was not looking for anything serious and then saying that Marlene was a wonderful woman but not quite what they were looking for in a significant other. “I know it’s hard, but you have to figure out how to harness it. It’s because you’re a Leo sun, probably.”

And though Marlene had rolled her eyes and reminded Mary that astrology was just an excuse for people to act like assholes and then claim that Mercury in Retrograde had something to do with it, she had retreated to her room and Googled what it meant to be a Leo, and whether her rising and moon signs (whatever those were, anyways) had anything to do with her unluckiness in love.

Mary aside, Marlene rarely confessed her worries about her dating life and her insecurities about feeling like she was just _too much_ to anyone. Not even Lily Evans, Alice Fortescue-Longbottom, or Remus Lupin, her closest friends from college and her usual companions on the weekends and on special events. They would not really understand. Lily and Remus had not dated anyone since college, for vastly different reasons. Remus had been heartbroken by Sirius Black, the first boyfriend he had ever had and (Marlene speculated, judging by the ways his eyes glazed over whenever anyone mentioned Sirius in polite conversation) the love of his life. Lily had devoted herself to her job as a paralegal and to saving for law school, making no efforts at finding a relationship. Alice, of course, had gotten married to Frank Longbottom approximately two seconds after commencement, making Marlene feel both smug about her own freedom and lost at the idea that her friends would one day begin to settle down. Most days, she reminded herself that she was lucky to have friends who cared about her, a family back home that adored her, and a career that genuinely excited her. One day, she would be Dr. McKinnon, Ph.D., and even the fact that she might be single when she finished her degree would not cloud the achievement of being the first person in her family to earn a master’s degree, much less a doctoral one.

To make up for her lack of love life, Marlene took to loudly professing her love for her celebrity crushes to entertain her friends. At the very least, she could be amusing about it. After a while, she moved on past the typical crushes that lined the pages of the glossies that she claimed to hate but secretly devoured and instead focused on less famous crushes, like the members of assorted National Women’s Soccer League teams, or B-list celebrities from Netflix original series that were buried on the homepage. Then, one day that she had woken up early for a symposium, she had accidentally stumbled into her new obsession – the warm, affable host of _On Air with Dorcas Meadowes_.

Marlene took to learning about the woman on camera with a fastidious precision that made her an adept graduate student. Dorcas, as Marlene learned through the five days a week that she watched her show and television clips from past episodes, had been born in Atlanta but had moved to New Jersey with her mother when she was a teenager. She had two younger brothers. Dorcas had moved to Godric’s Hollow right after college through a rotational internship program with the major television network that owned the local news channels. The internship had given her the option of living in Texas or moving to Godric’s Hollow, and she had picked Godric’s Hollow, as she preferred to remain in the Northeast. During the last phases of her internship, the television anchor that she had been shadowing had gone into unexpected labor, and Dorcas had stepped in to co-host _Good Morning Godric’s Hollow_ despite minimal prep time. She had been a natural at it and had returned to the show as part of a daily skit throughout the remainder of her internship. After her rotational program had ended, the network had taken an unprecedented plunge and assigned Dorcas to her very own show. It had paid off, as Dorcas’s _On Air_ now competed with _Morning Light with Rita Skeeter_ for viewers and ratings, even though Rita had the prime eight o’clock hour compared to Dorcas’s seven a.m. slot.

Through Remus, who woke up consistently early and was also an admirer of Dorcas, Marlene had found out something that Dorcas had not talked about during the three months that Marlene had been a faithful watcher of her show: Dorcas, too, identified as a lesbian, according to several interviews she had given during college and one interview that she had given during her rotational program. After discovering that, Marlene became committed to the idea of Dorcas more than ever, annoying her friends with fun facts that she had learned about her television crush. But like most celebrity crushes, Marlene had never expected anything to actually happen.

Then, came a strange confluence of events – Sirius reappearing in Remus’s life (and the rest of their lives, by default), Sirius running for office (a series of words that Marlene never would have imagined saying with a straight face, having known Sirius in college), and an interview that James Potter had secured for Sirius with Dorcas Meadowes (the jackpot, and the reason that Marlene woke up at four in the morning to do her hair and press her outfit and walk in her heels until they no longer felt as though they would make her feet bleed). Marlene had, with Lily’s help, scored a ticket to watch Sirius come out on television – she had been privately impressed with his willingness to be forthcoming about his sexuality, something that she had found terribly lacking when he and Remus had dated semi-secretly – and even more excitingly, had been introduced to Dorcas.

To Marlene’s delight, Dorcas in real life was even more thrilling, even more captivating, and even more brilliant than on television. She was adorned in colorful colors like a peacock, and her rapport with Sirius on stage was good-natured, as though she were chatting with an old friend rather than a young political upstart. Marlene thought in the midst of raucous applause that the excitement of being introduced to Dorcas would be enough to nurse for at least the next two months, but even more surprising, Dorcas came down from the stage right after Sirius’s interview to where she and Lily were sitting.

After accepting their gushing praise and asking polite questions about their livelihoods, Lily had begged away, claiming that her boss needed her urgently for a project. Just as the two-minute alarm rang across set, Dorcas looked up boldly to meet Marlene’s eyes.

“Is what Sirius says true?” She asked.

“What? Oh, um, yes,” Marlene said, stumbling over her words. “Yes, Sirius is really, actually gay. I was there for it.”

“What?” Dorcas asked, knitting her thick eyebrows together in confusion. “No, I meant what he said about you.”

“About me being a fellow queer?” Marlene asked, feeling the heat of a spotlight shining down on her like an errant sunray.

“Yes,” Dorcas said with a smile, and Marlene got the sense that she was laughing at her a little. Marlene felt extremely foolish.

A very cheerful-looking intern came up to Dorcas to brush more powder onto her forehead, and then promptly whisked away the brush and powder as though the touch-up had never happened. She beamed at Marlene, who mustered up a smile back.

“Right, well, yes. I am. Are you going to interview me too?” Marlene said, attempting to summon up the personality that had clearly been hiding somewhere.

“I’d like to,” Dorcas said sweetly. “But maybe not on camera. Maybe over dinner at that French place on Ivy Street next Friday? I’d do this Friday, but I’m traveling down to Jersey.”

Marlene felt as though she had to be in some sort of dream. She nodded wordlessly. Dorcas motioned towards the red-haired young man who had ushered Marlene and Lily to the audience.

“Does that work for you?”

“For me? Yes, oh, absolutely yes,” Marlene stammered out, knowing that she would have dropped the date of her dissertation defense if it meant that she could put time on the calendar to be with Dorcas.

“Gideon, give Ms.…McKinnon, was it? My phone number, please,” Dorcas said, “and make a reservation for that French place on Ivy for next Friday, would you?”

“Right away,” Gideon said with a broad smile. Marlene wondered what the hell they put in the water here that made everyone so prone to smiling with all their teeth all the time. Then, Dorcas shot Marlene a full smile that made the apples of her wide cheeks stick out and made Marlene weak in the knees, and Marlene realized it was not anything in the water at all. It was just Dorcas’s presence, plain and simple.

***

Marlene was sweating bullets as she lingered by the entrance of the brasserie on Ivy Street, hoping that she had not vividly hallucinated the entire moment that had led to this date. The jitters crawled up her legs. Mary’s words, warning her not to be _too much_ and to keep her normal zealousness to a minimum, weighed on her. This was her shot to win over her celebrity crush, and she was not going to mess it up by acting…intimidating. There was a part of her that was gentler and more delicate, and she was determined to put that foot forward if that’s what Dorcas was looking for.

“Sorry, am I late?” Dorcas said, speeding towards Marlene with a smile. She was wearing a bright red peacoat over gray trousers and a dark turtleneck. Marlene felt silly in her long skirt and square-necked tunic, which made her feel somewhat fashionable but very cold. Dorcas leaned in to hug Marlene, and Marlene could not get over the way that her hair smelled like coconut and tropical fruits. Marlene hoped that Dorcas could not feel the sweat running down her back. She felt as though she had been running through the pitch.

“You look great,” Dorcas said genuinely. She peered up at Marlene through her long eyelashes. “And sorry again for being late.”

“Not at all, you’re right on time,” Marlene said, feeling more nervous than usual. She opened the door. “And you look…well…stunning.”

“Have you ever been here before?” Dorcas asked, as the waiter guided them to a table. She was stopped twice on the way there by fans who were eager to let her know that they too, watched _On Air_ and loved it. Marlene felt annoyed by their presence.

“No,” Marlene admitted. “Remus, um, I don’t know if you remember Remus. You know, really tall, big sweater, dating Sirius now?”

“Yes, I do,” Dorcas said. “He seems sweet.”

“He is, for the most part. Anyways, he told me that he came here once but it ended up being an entire ploy to get him to work with Sirius on his campaign, so he didn’t actually get to eat anything here but it all smelled really good,” Marlene rambled.

“That's interesting,” Dorcas said, allowing the waiter to pull out her chair. Somehow, Dorcas managed to breathe new life into the filler of all filler words.

There was a moment of silence. Marlene rifled through the menu. Everything was written in small letters and seemed more expensive than she was used to. She glanced over at Dorcas, who was studying the menu.

“Are you going to get anything to drink?” Marlene asked, hoping that a gin and tonic might pave the way to more meaningful conversations. She twisted a strand of blonde hair around her finger and then let it go so that it retained a somewhat spiral shape.

“Oh, no, sorry, I don’t drink,” Dorcas said. “Hope that isn’t a deal-breaker.”

“I doubt anything about you would be a deal-breaker,” Marlene blurted out. She felt stupid about it until Dorcas grinned at her with delight. She had a soft dimple carved into one of her cheeks that was only visible up close. 

The waiter came and took their orders – some sort of fish dish for Dorcas with a fancy name, and an order of steak-frites for Marlene. The two of them made some small talk about Dorcas’s recent trip to New Jersey and the undergrads that Marlene taught as a doctoral student.

“So tell me more about yourself,” Dorcas said, as she sipped on Coca-Cola that for some reason had been poured into a goblet. “So you’re a doctoral student and you went to St. Godric’s for college. Where are you from?”

“Ohio,” Marlene said. “Not very glamorous, for the most part, but I love it. And you’re from Atlanta, right?” She asked, as though she did not know the exact neighborhood where she had been raised.

“Correct. But I haven’t been back in a minute,” Dorcas admitted, adjusting the scarf that she had wrapped around her head to cover a part of her curls. “Have you been to Ohio recently?”

“I went for Christmas,” Marlene said, thinking back to the huge celebration at her parents’ house with her four younger siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles just a few months earlier. “It was chaotic.”

Dorcas laughed and the crystal glass next to her seemed to sing along with her. “How so?”

“The McKinnons are notoriously loud about everything.”

“Do you fall into that category?”

“Yes…no…um…” Marlene stalled, trying to take Mary’s words to heart and come off as perhaps a bit more serene than usual.

“Something tells me that you aren’t quite being honest with me,” Dorcas said easily. Marlene looked over at her, at the way that Dorcas’s face was illuminated by the candlelight and the twinkling fairy bulbs of the restaurant so that it seemed to radiate from within.

“I’ve been known to be loud in the past,” Marlene said, trying to keep her voice level and quiet as much as possible.

“Alright,” Dorcas said, holding her hands up in surrender. The stacked gold rings on them glinted in the light. “I’ll let it drop. What do you do for fun? Like hobbies?”

Marlene grinned and took a large swig of the sparkling water that the waiter had put in front of them. “Well, I used to play soccer.”

“Did you like it?” Dorcas asked, tearing into a piece of French bread and smearing it with butter.

“I loved it,” Marlene said. “I still love it. Playing it, of course, but watching it as well. I mean, it’s not like women’s sports are respected in this fucking country at all, for fuck’s sake, but…oh, sorry,” she said quickly.

“Don’t apologize! You’re right. The U.S. Women’s National Team has talent for days and still makes less money. It’s completely unfair,” Dorcas said, nodding indignantly.

“What’s interesting is that soccer can really tell the story of the world.”

Dorcas propped her heart-shaped chin up on her hand and looked at Marlene. “Tell me all about it.”

Encouraged, Marlene pressed forward into a spiel about why the women’s teams both in Europe and in the United States deserved greater respect, how racism and gender stereotypes had played a huge part in the creation and popularity of the sport, and how the sociology of sports fascinated her and would probably make up a large chunk of her doctoral dissertation in a few years. By the time that their food arrived, Marlene realized that she had been talking for about fifteen minutes non-stop.

“Wow, sorry,” Marlene said abruptly. “I can really talk someone’s ear off.”

“No, no, please,” Dorcas said enthusiastically. “I’m so used to having to do a fair bit of talking that I sometimes just want to listen. And you have a really wonderful voice. It sounds like music.”

Marlene felt herself blushing despite her best efforts. “You're just flattering me.”

“It’s true,” Dorcas said, and her dark brown eyes danced with the flames of the candles in front of them. “You have such a powerful voice. It just really draws me in.”

Dorcas’s honesty – or undue flattery, a small part of Marlene whispered – surprised her. Marlene decided to be honest right back.

“My mother sometimes tells me that my voice is too brash,” Marlene sighed. “She says it can get grating. Thinks I should buy a muffler every once in a while.”

Dorcas looked surprised. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I’ve been listening to you talk and I never once thought that.”

“Well,” Marlene said, with a touch of a rare shyness, “I’ve been trying to keep it down. You know, I don’t want to embarrass you. And I want to make a good first impression.”

Dorcas snorted. “Unfortunately, my first impression of you was Sirius Black outing you. But my second impression had something to do with your really pretty eyes.”

Marlene felt incredibly warm. “It means a lot to me, to have someone so gorgeous say something like that to me.”

“You’re being too kind.” Dorcas ducked her head down looked up at her coquettishly.

“No, I’m being honest,” Marlene said with a laugh. “You’re the most beautiful woman I think I’ve ever seen. And the day you ended up on my T.V., completely by accident, I was so enraptured I think I put my shirt on the wrong way. I honestly feel like this date is a fever dream, or that I’m hallucinating.”

Dorcas laughed. “You’re funny. I think you’re just–”

She was interrupted by a fan who came up to the table and asked Dorcas to sign a notebook that he had. Dorcas signed her name quickly and smiled genuinely at him.

“Doesn’t it ever get tiring?” Marlene asked. “The whole being famous thing.”

“Somewhat,” Dorcas admitted, “but this is what I had dreamed of for so long, that I hope I get to cling to this feeling for a while. Maybe one day, I’ll get to move to New York and host _Good Morning America_ or something.”

“They’d be honored,” Marlene said plainly. “You’re amazing at your craft.”

They were interrupted three times during dessert for autographs and selfies with Dorcas, and by the fourth interruption during a post-dessert coffee, Dorcas was starting to look a little tired. Unfortunately for her, the fourth fan seemed insistent that they retake the photograph several times, until it met his standards.

“I think that should be good, yeah?” Dorcas asked politely. She tried to rub delicately at her eyes without ruining her makeup. “I’m starting to see stars from the flash.”

The man looked down at his digital camera. “Maybe one or two more.”

Dorcas forced a smile. “Would it be alright if we left those for another day?”

“No, I don’t think it’ll take too much time. I just feel like—”

“Hey buddy,” Marlene snapped, finally. “She’s been nice enough to you but let’s quit this. Maybe you have enough good pictures there, yeah? Photoshop it or something.”

“What’s it to you?”

“She’s trying to have a cup of coffee and you’ve been standing here for ten minutes talking flash photography like we’re at the zoo. Get over yourself.”

“Never took Dorcas for disrespectful,” the man said, crossing his arms.

“She’s not, asshole.” Marlene said with a dark look. “I am, though. Fuck off.”

The man looked at Marlene and rolled his eyes before stalking off without even throwing a _thank you_ in Dorcas’s direction.

Marlene was momentarily embarrassed. She cursed at herself and remembered Mary’s pronouncements. _Too loud, too aggressive, too much_. “Sorry.”

“Please,” Dorcas said, her eyes sparkling. “I’m delighted to have my own personal bodyguard accompanying me for dinner.”

Marlene laughed but could not help thinking about Dorcas’s words. Was this actually going well? Or did Dorcas think she was amusing but not worth pursuing anything with? She was desperate to ask, but her own self-doubts lingered in the air between them. After a moment of thinking, Marlene decided to toss them to the wind. Dorcas had already seen the brasher side of her and had not run away shouting. It was time to test the waters, Marlene thought fiercely. She swept her blonde hair up off her neck with the black rubber band that was eternally tied around her wrist.

“Dating must be really hard as a famous person,” Marlene said, attempting ease.

Dorcas smiled. “I actually don’t date very much. I’m always really busy, and it’s sort of hard to find someone who understands that. And to find someone who is willing to look past the sort of persona I have to put on television.”

“So who is the real Dorcas Meadowes?” Marlene asked boldly.

Dorcas smiled and took a drink of her glass. “A girl who grew up in Atlanta, and then New Jersey, with a complicated family and a load of insecurities.”

Though Marlene found it difficult to believe that anyone as magnificent as Dorcas could have any sort of insecurities, she chose to take her dinner companion at face value.

“In that case, I’m just a girl who grew up in Cleveland, with a complicated family and a load of insecurities. Nice to meet you,” Marlene said, extending her hand.

Dorcas shook her hand enthusiastically. Marlene noticed that she had sunflower-yellow nail polish on, and wished desperately that she had painted over her slightly-chipped black nail polish. She put her hands in her lap afterwards and curled her fingers into balls.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” Marlene said, leaning forward. “But I’m sort of wondering what your thoughts are here.”

“My thoughts on what?” Dorcas asked.

“Um, on me?”

Dorcas grinned broadly. “I think you’re lovely.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“You’re an excellent storyteller.”

“Not as good as you,” Marlene grinned. “But I’m okay.”

“And that you have a very fiery temper.”

Marlene resisted the urge to sink in her seat. _Fuck, good job, McKinnon._ “Is that so?”

“Very much so,” Dorcas said with amusement. Then she lowered her voice until it was nearly a feathery whispery. “And it’s a temper that I think is very hot. In all senses of the words.”

Marlene stared at her, dumbstruck. Dorcas smiled back as though they had been engaging in some light small talk. The waiter interrupted their moment of silence, asked them if they needed anything else ( _oxygen_ , Marlene felt like demanding absurdly) and handed them the check, which Dorcas insisted on paying with a flourish of her AmEx Platinum.

“I’d like to see you again, Marlene McKinnon, if you’d let me,” Dorcas said.

“If I’d _let_ you?” Marlene mock-gasped. “Dorcas, I would eat this shirt off my back if it meant that you’d give me a second shot to take you on a date.”

“Not necessary, but flattering,” Dorcas laughed.

Marlene helped Dorcas into her peacoat and the two of them strode out of the restaurant.

“Well,” Marlene said awkwardly, “I’ll be heading towards the train now.”

“I live the other way.” Dorcas jerked her head in the opposite direction of the train station.

A balloon of anxiety had blown up in Marlene’s throat at whether to suggest a kiss. Though Dorcas seemed interested, she did not want to come off too excited. No, Marlene thought, they would end the night with a hug, just how they started.

“Can I kiss you?” Dorcas asked suddenly.

Pure relief flooded Marlene's veins.

“Yes, of course, I wanted to ask but I was nervous,” Marlene blurted out.

“Something tells me you’re not the type to be a jumble of nerves,” Dorcas said, leaning in.

“With you, I am,” Marlene murmured, and she leaned down until she met Dorcas’s mouth.

With a flash, Marlene finally understood the reasons behind the poems that Remus had spent years trying to convince her to appreciate and the romantic comedies that Mary adored. There, underneath the lights on Ivy Street, Marlene understood what it felt to be seen – even, and especially, when it felt like she was too much for any one person to handle.


End file.
